Currently, the news abounds with yet another story of head or neck injuries incurred by a participant in a sport such as football or while engaging in other recreational activities. Similar injuries are common among operators of equipment such as motor cycles, all terrain vehicles (ATV's), snow machines or snow mobiles, or other similar equipment. Still other styles of protective headgear are worn by on the job by workers in certain jobs.
As used herein, the term protective headgear will be applied to all protective helmets suitable for use in work, athletic endeavors or while operating motorcycles or other such devices. While a football helmet is used herein for purposes of disclosure, it will be recognized that many other forms of protective headgear may incorporate the novel spider web structures of the present invention. Therefore, for the sake of brevity, the term football helmet is used hereinafter to represent all such protective headgear.
There are many types of protective headgear known in the prior art. For such headgear to be effective in protecting a wearer thereof, it must fit properly. For wide acceptance by persons in need of head/neck protection, such headgear must be comfortable when worn. Such headgear typically uses padding applied to a hard outer shell to cushion the wearer's head from impacts
Human heads come in a wide variety of sizes and shapes. Manufacturers of such headgear must, therefore, provide headgear in a wide range of sizes and styles to properly protect this variety of head sizes and shapes.
A typical protective helmet consists of a hard, molded, polymeric outside shell with a molded foam padded insert sized and shaped to conform to a specific head size and shape. This construction creates manufacturing inefficiencies because manufacturers have heretofore needed to provide tooling (e.g., molds) to produce molded padding inserts to fit these aforementioned diverse head styles and shapes. Even with a range of sizes available in each style helmet produced, a perfect fit was not obtained by many users of the helmets of the prior art.
During the early twenty-first century, deaths of professional football players began to be linked to multiple concussions received during those players' playing careers. In response to allegations being made that the current generation of football helmets were not providing the protection advertised by their manufacturers, United States Senator Thomas Udall urged the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in the United States to look at the problem of concussions received by football players. Specifically, Senator Udall asked the FTC to investigate “misleading safety claims and deceptive practices” of football helmet manufactures. [New York Times, Jan. 4, 2011, Page B10] In early 2011 the FTC announced that it would independently test the safety claims made by manufacturers of football helmets.
As awareness of the possible inadequacy of football helmets to properly protect players of the game spread, many questions began to be raised as to how protective helmets could be improved. The novel spider web-based technology of the present invention offers an answer to how to better protect the heads and necks of helmet wearers (e.g., football players) exposed to impacts to the head and neck region of their bodies.